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The truth lies in the Consideration that the Couplement
subsists by virtue of the Soul's presence.
This, however, is not to say that the Soul gives itself as it is
in itself to form either the Couplement or the body.
No; from the organized body and something else, let us say a
light, which the Soul gives forth from itself, it forms a
distinct Principle, the Animate; and in this Principle are vested
Sense-Perception and all the other experiences found to belong to
the Animate.
But the "We"? How have We Sense-Perception?
By the fact that We are not separate from the Animate so
constituted, even though certainly other and nobler elements go
to make up the entire many-sided nature of Man.
The faculty of perception in the Soul cannot act by the immediate
grasping of sensible objects, but only by the discerning of
impressions printed upon the Animate by sensation: these
impressions are already Intelligibles while the outer sensation
is a mere phantom of the other [of that in the Soul] which is
nearer to Authentic-Existence as being an impassive reading of
Ideal-Forms.
And by means of these Ideal-Forms, by which the Soul wields
single lordship over the Animate, we have Discursive-Reasoning,
Sense-Knowledge and Intellection. From this moment we have
peculiarly the We: before this there was only the "Ours"; but at
this stage stands the WE [the authentic Human-Principle] loftily
presiding over the Animate.
There is no reason why the entire compound entity should not be
described as the Animate or Living-Being- mingled in a lower
phase, but above that point the beginning of the veritable man,
distinct from all that is kin to the lion, all that is of the
order of the multiple brute. And since The Man, so understood, is
essentially the associate of the reasoning Soul, in our reasoning
it is this "We" that reasons, in that the use and act of reason
is a characteristic Act of the Soul.
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